I chose this image because it represents the way people are growing through knowledge, the way I did by learning in order to write about a topic.
Sunday, April 28, 2013
Conclusion
This
blog experience was different than I thought it would be. I actually learned more
about the subjects I picked when looking them up. I enjoyed expressing myself by
researching topics I found interesting and connecting a bigger part of the
world together. I also learned that sociology is a lot like psychology in ways.
Both try to find answers about individuals or groups of people and the way they
interact. I might add on to this blog once the class is over with, just because it is easier than I thought and is a great way of communication.
I chose this image because it represents the way people are growing through knowledge, the way I did by learning in order to write about a topic.
I chose this image because it represents the way people are growing through knowledge, the way I did by learning in order to write about a topic.
Current Event
As a current event, I went with the bombing in Boston, April
15, 2013. I chose this event because crime and deviance was a chapter we
covered in our book. I believe sociologist would look at this event and try to
find the motives of the deviant. When I had first heard the horrifying news
about the bombs in Boston, I immediately thought “Who and why are would someone
ever do that? It’s so terrible. They have to be messed up in the head.” I can’t
say that I have any idea to date on what the motives where but I can look into
what sociologists have researched on crime and motives.
“Methods Not Motives: Implications of the Convergence of
International Organized Crime and Terrorism” is an article that theorized the
connection between organized crime with terrorism. While crime is economically
driven, they state that terrorism is politically related. This article related
to the bombing because it discusses different motives of bigger scale deviance
as it examines the similar methods used by both organized crime and terrorism.
Photograph of the bombing in Boston
Besides all the conspiracy theories found on Youtube, this video is an actual interview. The video clip is about the mother of the suspects' view on the bombing. She claims her sons are innocent and that they are being set up. This raises more conspiracy theories, and makes it harder to come up with the motive.
The article “Does Religion Really Reduce Crime?” provides
useful information on a research project conducted to find whether there is a link
between crime and religion. As I looked into the news, the media portrays the
act may have been involved with Jihad, which is attached to the Muslim culture.
In the abstract of the article, the researcher states that “most previous
studies have found a negative effect of religion on crime”, but that the
researcher had found “negligible effect of religion on crime and a negative
effect of crime on religion.”
“Feelings of Revenge, Retaliation Motive, and Posttraumatic
Stress Reactions in Crime Victims” is an article that provides information on
how feelings of revenge arise from crime victims. The reaction is explained by a
“maladaptive coping reaction to experienced injustice”. Could it be possible
that the bombing was based off of revenge? There is no way to know until more
information comes out.
or
http://jiv.sagepub.com/content/21/2/229
"My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I just signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes."
Ronald Reagan
This quote is sort of ironic.
"My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I just signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes."
Ronald Reagan
This quote is sort of ironic.
Transgender
For the second blog post, I chose to elaborate on a very briefly
covered topic found in chapter 11; Transgender. The book defines transgender as
“those who live as a gender different from that to which they were assigned at
birth.”(pg.254, ) Other than the definition, there is a short paragraph
describing the struggles arising among transgender individual regarding their identity. Our society is based off labeling things and putting them into categories. A coworker explained how she sometimes still had trouble classifying her son, who identified as a girl until the age of 18. I wanted to learn more about transgender because I find it interesting and because it isn't brought up often.
As an article that explains concepts and theories on
transgenderism, I found the “Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender” to be most
relevant. The encyclopedia itself has many sections, including a 15 page
chapter on transgender and transexuality. Because transgender is classified in
the DSM as Gender Identity Disorder, the chapter starts out by discussing the biological
and environmental etiology of transgenderism. There was not much information
given about those matters because there has been no indication of a causation of
transgenderism. Many are currently in works of trying to remove it from the DSM
because they do not believe it should be considered a disorder. The encyclopedia
also gives useful information on hormonal therapy.
The image I found is of two “Lady Boys”, as termed in
Thailand.
This video clip really shows the conflicting body challenges
a transgender child deals with. The parents are very accepting and willing to
do anything how their child.
By working at the campus’s Women’s Center, I have been
exposed to more of the LGBTQA community than I had originally been exposed to. In
the office, we are a safe zone, an ally, but not everyone is as accepting. I
picked the “The 2003 National School Climate Survey” article because, by use of
statistics from the survey, it shows how unsafe and even dangerous the schools
can be for transsexual and transgender individuals.
The second informative article was called “Transgender
and Gender Non-Conforming Youth Recommendations for Schools”. This article also
is about how schools are an unsafe place. “Transgender students face severe
discrimination and harassment in schools. 89.5% of transgender students report
feeling unsafe in schools. Transgender students are at higher risk of dropping
out of school and of suicide.” But the majority of the article is about the
ways to make schools and public places a safe zone. They cover the overall recommendations,
how to avoid disrespectful pronouns, toilet accessibility (lack of neutral
restrooms) and other.
“People changed
lots of other personal things all the time. They dyed their hair and dieted
themselves to near death. They took steroids to build muscles and got breast
implants and nose jobs so they'd resemble their favorite movie stars. They
changed names and majors and jobs and husbands and wives. They changed
religions and political parties. They moved across the country or the world --
even changed nationalities. Why was gender the one sacred thing we weren’t
supposed to change? Who made that rule?”
― Ellen Wittlinger, Parrotfish
Sunday, March 3, 2013
References
De Dreu, C. K., Greer, L.
L., Van Kleef, G. A., Shalvi, S., & Handgraaf, M. J. (2011). Oxytocin promotes human ethnocentrism. Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, 108(4), 1262-1266.
Ember, Carol R., and Melvin Ember, eds. Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender: Men and Women in the World's Cultures Topics and Cultures AK-Volume 1; Cultures LZ. Vol. 2. Springer, 2003.
Hammond, R. A., & Axelrod, R. (2006). The evolution of ethnocentrism. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 50(6), 926-936.
Heaton, Paul. "Does Religion Really Reduce Crime?*." Journal of Law and Economics 49.1 (2006): 147-172.
Kasomo , D. (2012). An assessment of ethnic conflict and its challenges today. African Journal of Political Science and International Relations, 6(1), 7. doi: 10.5897/AJPSIRX11.001
Orth, Ulrich, Leo Montada, and Andreas
Maercker. "Feelings of revenge, retaliation motive, and posttraumatic
stress reactions in crime victims." Journal of Interpersonal
Violence 21.2 (2006): 229-243.
Ethnocentrism
My topic of choice is ethnocentrism from Chapter
2 of our Sociology book.
Ethnocentrism is defined by as a “habit of seeing things
only from the point of view of one’s own group” (Anderson, pg. 37). This leads
one to view their country as better than others in terms of religion,
government, morals etc. I chose this
topic because I found ethnocentrism interesting and had not heard of this idea before this
class. At first, it reminded me of the time I took an art history class, when we had gone over the idea of primitivism, which I see as
sort of the opposite of ethnocentrism. Primitivisms is to prefer other cultures by following the idea that
simpler is better, although they still pictured their own cultures as more advanced.
“An assessment of ethnic conflict and its challenges today”
This journal goes over the major sources of ethnic
conflicts, theories of its origin (including the constructivists', structural and
psychological theories) and historical development. The journal also proposes possible
ways to end the global conflict. This article best fits the subject of ethnocentric because it is both relevant to todays' challenges and gives a precise definition of the idea.
Link:
Link:
http://www.academicjournals.org/ajpsir/pdf/pdf2012/Jan/Kasomo.pdf
"Evolution of ethnocentrism"
This article discusses theories of how and why the development of
predispositions towards “in-groups” came to be. The authors used an agent-based technique to set up
their testing model and discussed the results. In the results, they found ethnocentrism to be a dominant strategy.
Link:
http://jcr.sagepub.com/content/50/6/926.full.pdf+html
http://jcr.sagepub.com/content/50/6/926.full.pdf+html
“Oxytocin promotes human ethnocentrism”
An interesting article I found that gives an introduction of what ethnocentrism can lead to
and how the brain chemical oxytocin may be affecting one’s ethnocentric views.
Link:
http://www.pnas.org/content/108/4/1262.short
http://www.pnas.org/content/108/4/1262.short
Here is a link to a relevant video on "Ethnocentrism,Socialization, Globalization";
“Don’t misunderstand me. The terrorist actions of Al-Qaeda were and are unmitigatedly evil. But the astonishing naivety which decreed that America as a whole was a pure, innocent victim, so that the world could be neatly divided up into evil people (particularly Arabs) and good people (particularly Americans and Israelis), and that the latter had a responsibility now to punish the former, is a large-scale example of what I’m talking about - just as it is immature and naive to suggest the mirror image of this view, namely that the western world is guilty in all respects and that all protestors and terrorists are therefore completely justified in what they do. In the same way, to suggest that all who possess guns should be locked up, or (the American mirror-image of this view) that everyone should carry guns so that good people can shoot bad ones before they can get up to their tricks, is simply a failure to think into the depths of what’s going on.”
― N.T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God
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